With the increasing availability of relatively inexpensive and easily operated recording devices as well as widely accessible Internet enabled distribution technologies, audio, video and audio-visual recordings have become an increasingly popular manner for individuals, groups, and governments to distribute information to others. Various local and national government agencies (e.g., law enforcement, homeland security), as well as corporations and other businesses, may want to obtain information about various characteristics of such recordings. For example, it may be desirable to determine where and when the recording was made. Sometimes such information can be directly discerned from the recording itself, for example, by the presence of corroborating material present in the recording (e.g., a recent edition of a newspaper seen next to the image of a kidnap victim) or from metadata accompanying the recording. However, in many circumstances, such information is not readily available and other manners of determining where and when the recording may need to be utilized.